It isn’t often that I vehemently disagree with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. Last night was one of those times. In fact, O’Donnell’s “Rewrite” segment may have been the single worse segment any progressive or liberal on television has ever put together, as well-meaning as it was.

The segment was essentially O’Donnell’s editorial take on the bipartisan meeting yesterday between various members of Congress and Tr-mp that was supposed to be a brainstorming session designed to come up with ways to stop the carnage in America’s killing fields, especially our schools. Instead the made-for-TV meeting, sometimes weirdly featuring giggling and guffawing, was a dazzling display of ignorance and authoritarian stupidity on the part of Tr-mp, which was predictable and therefore fatiguing, and an embarrassing display of impotence and groveling on the part of Democrats, which was unwarranted and therefore disheartening.

But let me give you a little bit of what O’Donnell, who was once a top staffer in the U.S. Senate, said in defense of those Democrats, including two senators who have been our champions on gun control, Dianne Feinstein and Chris Murphy:

The Democrats clearly made a calculation before the meeting started to approach the meeting professionally in the hope of actually getting something done. Any one of the Democrats could have become a big media star tonight by repeatedly explaining to the president [sic] how wrong he is, how ignorant he is, and how much of a problem he and his party have been for gun legislation.

So, every Democrat in the room resisted the urge to attack the president for his own position on gun policy after all previous mass murders because it was a meeting in which there was cause for some hope of strengthening background checks, which everyone in the meeting including the president [sic] seemed to be in favor of.

Now, leaving aside O’Donnell’s ridiculous and too-cynical assertion that any Democrat who would have stood up to Tr-mp in that widely covered meeting would have done so merely to “become a big media star,” let us quickly look at the bill most discussed during yesterday’s meeting that would strengthen background checks, known as the Manchin-Toomey amendment.

All the Joe Manchin (D)-Pat Toomey (R) bill, which failed to pass in 2013 almost entirely because of Republicans, would essentially do about strengthening background checks is expand existing checks to include gun shows and Internet sales (while, incredibly, expanding the interstate sale of guns). That is just about it. The bill does not restrict the sale of any type of weapon between private parties. And, as a tribute to the NRA, the bill goes out of its way to outlaw any type of gun registry, even though a gun registry is already outlawed.

I ask Democrats in Congress this: Is the Manchin-Toomey legislation, in this moment of increased pressure on Republicans to act, really the best you can hope for? Huh? Is Manchin-Toomey what you are going to bring back home to your fired-up and fired-on constituents and ask for votes?

O’Donnell later commended Senator Feinstein for playing the role of the Proper Senator, which he said was, “to never give up hope that there can be some progress, even minor progress, even in the age of Tr-mp.” Then the former Senate staffer said something stunning:

The job of Senator, done well, is never easy. But in the age of Tr-mp the job of being a Democratic senator has never been more difficult. Never. The easiest thing for Democratic senators to do in the room with the president [sic] today would be to attack him, to show how much smarter they are than he is. But the Democrats didn’t do that. They chose professionalism over grandstanding in the very slim hope that they might actually get Donald Tr-mp to sign something, the slim hope that Donald Tr-mp might force the Republicans in the House and Senate to take a baby step in the right direction…

For people who hate Donald Tr-mp and wanted to see him attacked by those Democrats today it was probably a difficult meeting to watch. But if you know what professionalism looks like in the Senate and the House, you know that what you saw today was Democrats whose oath of office obliges them to never give up hope.

First of all, there are hard jobs in this life. But being a U.S. Senator isn’t one of them, for Democrats or Republicans. It may be a frustrating job, but it ain’t hard. And, in fact, for Democrats “in the age of Tr-mp,” the job is much easier, if they stop being Proper Senators while meeting with Tr-mp in front of TV cameras and stop pretending that Tr-mp is a person they can do business with. If DACA didn’t teach them that lesson, then they are unteachable. The job is easier for Democrats not only because they don’t have to defend the indefensible Tr-mp like Republicans have to do, but because they are dealing with a principle-less know-nothing in the Whites’ House whose words uttered in a meeting staged for television are only worth something because they are worth ignoring.

Secondly, it is shameful, in this powerful cultural moment in which the momentum is swinging in the right direction, to merely cling to a “very slim hope” and beg Tr-mp and the Republicans for a relatively tiny victory like Manchin-Toomey. I mean, I am typically an incrementalist regarding most things, but the “slim hope” strategy is absolutely shameful right now. This is the time to aim high, much higher than a bill, which itself is a compromise of a compromised bill, that fails to do a damn thing about the availability of battlefield weapons on American streets.

Joe Manchin said this morning that his bill represents an opportunity to get “meaningful change.” Well, the meaning of “meaningful” has changed. And Democrats need to shout that truth to Tr-mp and to all Republicans who seem to be in a state of permanent prostration before Wayne LaPierre and the gun lobby. And if Republicans stay prostrated, that will make it easier for newly energized gun control voters to roll over some of them in November, so long as there is a tough gun control Democrat on the ballot.

Finally, as for O’Donnell’s claim that alleged Tr-mp-haters “wanted to see him attacked by those Democrats,” he’s wrong on two counts. Most of us don’t hate Tr-mp. Or at least we shouldn’t. He’s clearly a disordered human being whose mental disturbances should arouse in us something much more akin to pity than hatred. What we should hate, though, is the undemocratic system that initially empowered him and the Republican Party that keeps him in power. What we should hate is the Tr-mp administration’s corruption and incompetence, even as we fear the public is getting used to it.

And most of us didn’t want Democrats to attack Tr-mp yesterday just for the sake of attacking him. We wanted Democrats to attack the phoniness and hypocrisy of the entire enraging spectacle. We wanted Democrats to defend President Obama, who himself was attacked and slandered by Tr-mp at that meeting. We wanted Democrats to show a skeptical country, particularly skeptical young folks who are just getting their first taste of political activism, that there is at least one party willing to fight for bold—bold—reforms like reinstating the assault weapons ban and implementing truly universal background checks, even if the fight is hard and the outcome uncertain. What we wanted was a group of Democrats who refuse to initially and meekly settle for “baby steps in the right direction.” 

But we got none of that at yesterday’s bizarre meeting. What we got was weird talk about mental health and phony talk from Tr-mp about “comprehensive” legislation that will never, never, never happen. What we got was talk of banning bump stocks and of passing the “Fix NICS,” legislation, neither of which should even be the slightest bit controversial, but for some NRA-related reason is. We got talk of making kids wait until they’re 21 before they can legally buy weapons of war and do God-knows-what with them.

We also got a familiarly confused Tr-mp who seemed to embrace an assault weapons ban as he was playing his self-created and always poorly acted role of “dealmaker.” What we got was an authoritarian Tr-mp openly urging the subversion of due process under law, an assertion that if it had ever exited the lips of President Obama would have gotten him impeached or lynched or both.

And, perhaps most disturbing of all, we got some giddy and “optimistic” Democrats who think yesterday’s meeting somehow put Tr-mp in a bind, as if his ethically-empty words could ever bind him to anything.

In short, it was an embarrassing, pathetic, and unhelpful hour in American politics.